Beetroot juice also has an additional, instantly recognizable effect that could have a significant psychological impact. The vegetable's natural color can add unfamiliar hues to athletes' waste products."You're going to pee purple, you're going to poo purple," said Baar. "There's nothing quite as good for a placebo as seeing, 'Oh yeah, I'm taking the beetroot, there it is, everything is working really well.'"

Like Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks, Lehrer writes self-help for people who would be embarrassed to be seen reading it. For this reason, their chestnuts must be roasted in “studies” and given a scientific gloss. The surrender to brain science is particularly zeitgeisty. Their sponging off science is what gives these writers the authority that their readers impute to them, and makes their simplicities seem very weighty.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Ganesha's Sweet Tooth is Sanjay Patel's latest children's book based on Hindu mythology. The story's not as fun to read as Sanjay's terrific Ramayana: Divine Loohole (here, an elephant learns to love himself despite his facial deformity, and writes a great epic along the way), but Patel's vibrant art bursts with energy.

My five year old in particular loved the book. You can preorder it for 40% off at Amazon.

A faculty member on the program’s advisory committee noted the lack of student interest in the program in a Tuesday email, but also said the program was “extremely expensive for Yale,” and called its language component “notoriously weak,” which caused students to struggle upon re-entering Yale’s Chinese language curriculum.

The March 2009 report stated that participants “often do not learn as much in a semester as students at the same level in a semester at Yale,” which can cause problems for those who continue studying Chinese in New Haven.

3. Negative review of Nike's Fuelband. "The only trouble was that the device didn’t seem to work very well."

4. James Poniewozik, Time magazine TV critic, tweeted that "NBC tape delay coverage is like the airlines: its interest is in giving you the least satisfactory service you will still come back for." Via.